Page 54 of Cheater and the Saint
I sipped my coffee as I thought it over. We’d ended the night on good terms. Amazing, actually. I didn’t do anything to upset him.
The only sound in the room was his typing. I kept staring at him, watching his furrowed brow and the blue eyes that were fixated on his work. He didn’t look up at me. Not once.
“So,” I started, shifting in my chair.
Saint continued typing.
“Last night was great,” I said, knowing how fucking cliché it sounded. But the guy was giving me no choice, forcing me to delve into the pool of cliché phrases just to keep us talking.
“Mhm,” was all he said.
“Dude, what’s up?” I asked, cutting right to it.
Finally, a reaction. He stopped typing and focused on me. “Huh? Nothing.”
“Why are you acting like this?” I asked, waving a hand toward him. “We fuck like rabbits and then the next day, I can’t even get you to look at me?”
“I’m looking at you now, aren’t I?”
Wow. Saint the Asshole was coming out to play that morning.
“You don’t have to be a jerk,” I said, trying to get a read on him.
Saint hid his emotions a little too well. All I saw was his indifferent expression. His icy blue eyes regarded me a moment longer before losing interest and concentrating back on the laptop.
“I’m not being a jerk,” he said. “I just have a lot of homework.”
It didn’t go unnoticed that his behavior was usually howIacted the morning after. In the few instances where a guy or girl stayed over, I’d ushered them out the door so quick that sometimes they’d still been pulling on their clothes as they left.
Funny, actually, but it was how I’d expected to act toward Saint after getting him into bed. Hewas the one doing it to me instead.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it then,” I said, scooting my chair back before standing. Being as loud as possible. It didn’t faze him. Taking my coffee with me, I went to my room.
I’d thought after finally screwing him and getting it out of my system, my desire for him would fade—that after I got what I wanted, I’d lose interest. Fate must’ve had a good laugh when it only made my desire for him grow stronger.
I wanted him even more. Wanted to fuck him again. Not just once, but multiple times.
How many times had some chick blown up my phone with texts, saying how much she liked me and didn’t want it to end? How many times had a guy done the same? Countless, if I was being honest. I wasn’t mean to anyone I fucked, but when they wanted more, I turned intothatprick who basically had used them for sex.
Now Saint was treatingmethat way.
Karma was a cruel bitch.
Bored—and honestly a bit disappointed in how the morning had gone so far—I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my social media.
A picture of Heath and his girlfriend Tabitha was the first post. They smiled and held up lattes from Starbucks, with a caption from him that said, “Coffee after a morning jog. Life doesn’t get better than this.” I loved that he’d found someone who treated him well. They were pretty perfect for each other, in a totallythey’re so sweet, I’m gonna pukekind of way.
I smiled before continuing on.
Tayte posted twenty minutes ago about being hungover from a party, and a few of those green-faced, sick emojis was tacked onto the end. Not surprising. Whatwassurprising, however, was how he could still be a B average student with all the partying he did every weekend.
“Shit.” Thinking of grades made me remember that I had an assignment for French due by midnight Sunday. I still had a day to finish it, but it’d probably take me that long to even do it. “Goddammit, I’m gonna fail.”
I didn’t evenwantto take French, but I’d had to take a foreign language class—every major required it, so I needed to get it out of the way eventually. By the time I’d registered for classes, all of the Spanish classes had been full. So it’d either been French or German, and I’d randomly picked one.
The assignment was to translate a few pages of text, and then write my own essay—still in French, dammit—about my plans for the future. Double whammy there. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do after graduating. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see myself in a regular nine-to-five job.
I didn’t want ordinary. I wanted excitement. Adventure. Maybe a thrill or two. I wanted the kind of job that when I went to work every day, I was happy.
Being happywas the simplest, and yet the hardest, thing to want in life.
After going to the website where we did most of the assignments for French, I clicked on the writing one and just stared at it for a while. I downed my mug of coffee before going back into the kitchen for more.
Saint didn’t look at me, and I didn’t say anything to him. I wondered if that was our new normal. No more funny morning conversations where I teased him, no more sexual tension from when I’d gently push him against the wall and kiss him, trying to get him to give in. No more of his shy smiles or his weird, kind of twisted sense of humor.
Just two guys sharing the same space and ignoring each other.
Sometimes sex did ruin everything.
